Monolithic and microlithic kernel

http://welovec.blogspot.in/2011/04/difference-between-monolithic-and.html

Nothing to cram, funda is simple as their names. Mono means everthing in kernel space.
Micro means very minimal in kernel space.

Mono what goes into the kernel (kernel space)
Process management, memrory management, file system, i/o services etc. e.g Linux kernel;

Micro Kernels what goes into the kernel
very minimal support for the process management goes into the kernel, everything else all above mentioned things are implemented in user space.

These services in user space are called as servers. kernel communicates with them with message passing(IPC). e.g QNX





The main disdvantage of monolithic kernels is the dependency between system components - a bug might crash the entire system - and the fact that large kernels also

become difficult to mantain.

Other disadvantages are the kernel size, lack of extensibility and the bad maintainability. Bug-fixing or the addition of new features means a recompilation of the whole

ernel. This is time and resource consuming because the compilation of a new kernel can take severalhours and alot of memory. Everytime someone adds a new feature or

xes a bug, it means recompilation of the whole kernel.